t's Nest" described by Cowper in
his _Task_, pays one natural penalty for the rare beauty of its site. It
pants on a rock whose gorges of lime are the seat of a perpetual thirst.
In vain have the suffering natives sunk seven basins in one alley of the
town, the cleft separating the quarter of the Son of David from that of
the children of Jesus (_Aissa_). The water only trickles by drops, and,
though plentiful in winter, deserts them altogether in the season when
their air-hung gardens, planted in earth brought up from the plains,
need it the most. As the mellowing of the season brings with it its
plague of aridity, recourse is had to the river at the bottom of the
ravine, the Oued-Hamadouch. Then from morning to night perpendicular
chains of diminutive, shrewd donkeys are seen descending and ascending
the precipice with great jars slung in network.

[Illustration: KABYLE GROUP.]

But the Hamadouch itself in the sultry season is but a thread of water,
easily exhausted by the needs of a population counting three thousand
mouths. Then the folks of Kalaa would die of thirst were it not for the
foresight of a marabout of celebrity, whom chance or miracle caused to
discover a hidden spring at the bottom of the rock. By the aid of
subscriptions among the rich he built a fountain over the sources of the
spring.

It is a small Moorish structure, with two stone pilasters supporting a
pointed arch. In the centre is an inscription forbidding to the pious
admirers of the marabout the use of the fountain while a drop remains in
the Hamadouch. To assist their fidelity, the spring is effectually
closed except when all other sources have peremptorily failed, in the
united opinion of three amins (Kabyle sheikhs). When the amins give
permission the chains which restrain the mechanism are taken off, and
the conduits are opened by means of iron handles operating on small
valves of the same metal. In the great droughts the fountain of Marabout
Yusef-ben-Khouia may be seen surrounded with a throng of astute,
white-nosed asses, waiting in philosophic calm amid the excitement and
struggle of the attendant water-bearers.

[Illustration: YUSEF'S FOUNTAIN.]

Seen hence, from the base of the precipice, where abrupt pathways trace
their zigzags of white lightning down the rock, and where no vegetation
relieves the harsh stone, the town of Kalaa seems some accursed city in
a Dantean _Inferno_. Seen from the peaks of Bogni, on the contrary, the